


Sacrilege

by brucebannerisms



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gen, Suicide, WIP
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-12-12
Updated: 2012-12-13
Packaged: 2017-11-20 23:40:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/590995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brucebannerisms/pseuds/brucebannerisms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Starts out Pre-Avengers Initiative.<br/>"In case you needed to kill me, but you can't! I know! I tried!... I got low. I didn't see an end, so I put a bullet in my mouth... and the other guy spit it out!"<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the beginning of a Tony/Bruce Science Bros SL that hasn't gotten around to that part of the SL yet...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Before the other guy spits it out.

At first it became a sort of agoraphobia. Fear of leaving his house lest _he_ destroy again. Failing that, he left the country, his own personal exile. Not his choice, not his making. Well, sort of his making.

Could he fault himself that? Did Carion fault himself when he potentially saved thousands of lives but died as a result? Could he claim a cause as noble? 

No, perhaps he was just selfish. Science for science’s sake, a desire to know all that there is to know. Selfish. He might not consider himself to be, _the other guy_ , but he certainly created him. 

And he certainly can’t destroy him either.

That first month off Sagar Island was the most difficult of his life. Worse than his destruction and his, Bruce’s lack of control was the realization that he had alienated himself so completely from any form of relationship for the foreseeable and unforeseeable future.

Could he fault himself that? After all, he didn’t know it would come to this.

He didn’t even know it was a risk (liar. Pathetic liar). 

A cause made less noble with the question of what sacrifice had he really made. A cause made less noble by the fact that he didn’t die. He is no martyr, he created life; he did not save it.

And yet he tried for the opposite in both cases.

He tried to create strength, will, power. But all of those things controlled. Instead he created someone different. Something that is inside of him but is not him. And then, when he tried to fix it, death was no longer an option. Denied of all noble cause. Obstructed from that which he sought in his experimentation and prevented from correcting what has far outweighed it’s benefit to science.

At least he’s proven he was willing to make a sacrifice, even if it were no longer possible.

His personal exile. A tiny island off the Bengal coast of India. Afraid to cross paths with anyone. For a month he barely ate, barely slept, barely moved. The only thing he was motivated to do was work. If Bruce Banner was destroyed by the serum, his brain was left behind. Calculations and theories prevented him from losing himself completely. For a while.

For a month he worked endlessly, tirelessly. He worked without any expectation of success, no solution in sight, yet he wonders now if he ever did have any hope. If he does have any hope. 

Lack of sleep does strange things to the mind. Colors come out all wrong, insects infest the walls and dots blot out vision. Logic becomes an entirely different game. At some point, for some, suicide becomes an option. Maybe the exhaustion makes you pity yourself. Or maybe Bruce always did. Weakness becomes you and so something so weak (Is it weak? Do I truly believe suicide is weak?) seems the natural decision. 

For a month he worked, and then one day, mid-morning, he set down his pen, removed his glasses and walked out the door of his single room hut. He walked to the shore and felt the water against his toes, seeping into the cuffs of his pants, making them stick to his ankles, the sun in his eyes. He felt like he had just slept for years and was awake again to the world. He felt like all his work was for this resolution now streaming through his blood stream, beating in his heart. Lack of sleep warps logic, or does it just add perspective?

Maybe he had planned it; the gun was there, in a drawer he had found himself periodically open and staring into as if it held the answer to the final question. Standing there on the beach, he winced as he stared directly at the sun and swayed slightly with the tide. He nodded to himself, as if solving a difficult problem in his head. He walked methodically and calmly back to the house. He opened the drawer and pulled out the pistol. Without pause he opened his mouth to feel the metal barrel against his tongue. Without pause he switched off the safety. Without pause he pulled the trigger. He wasn’t killing _him_ , he was killing Bruce Banner. And at that point, without sleep, food, logic, reason, emotion, anything at all, that was fine by him.

On his secluded plot of land off the bay the echoing, ear-splitting, clean, crisp sound of a gunshot bounced off the surrounding trees. Birds taking to flight out of fear was the only sound before silence swallowed the bullet just like Bruce did. The tide continued to swell and ebb, the sun continued to beat down, the palms continued to sway.

The world maintains equilibrium without Bruce Banner, without _him_.


	2. Science?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The bit where the other guy spits it out.  
> Bruce comes to a realization.

He awoke in the water. Floating, on his back, heels scraping against the bank.  
Completely nude.

For a moment he just lay floating in the water, regaining consciousness, mind flitting around in search of its last left off place. Flitting back, like pages, through a tableaux tinted green with rage and red with pain and black with confusion. No longer familiar to him, his recollections of losing himself when the other guy takes over. A ringing gunshot rents the air in his memory, causing him to flounder in the water. Bruce Banner sits on the ocean floor, coughing and spluttering.

He shot himself, he remembers. He shot them both, intending to die, happy with the prospect. And yet now he coughs up salt water and blood. He flits forward again through the angry memories, sees vaguely the red pain of the bullet which quickly turned to green blinding anger. The...Hulk screams in agony and anger and with a strength even Banner never thought possible, he spits out the bullet, sending it skipping out over the water. 

Bruce blinks, rubbing salt water from his eyes and adjusting to the sun. Did that just happen? Did it really just bite the bullet and live to tell the tale? At first his scientific mind takes over, fascinated at this new discovery. He's almost halfway towards getting up in search of his hut in order to document this and conjecture what has just occurred. But then he falls back into the water with a splash and a groan. _He_...I...am invincible. Bruce groans in epithet. He feels a spark of anger roll through him and he breathes heavily. As the breath whooshes out of his chest his anger quickly turns to despair, an emotion he is too familiar with but also well equipped to manage.


	3. Times are Changing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Agent Romanoff has recruited Bruce for The Avengers Initiative. With little information, and without any logic he can think of or explain, he accepts. Bruce wonders if he is prepared to reenter a society he excluded himself from long ago.

The only positive Bruce can find to still being alive is the concept of progress, and change. Of course he never doubted the passage of time, the evolution of humanity; he just never thought any of these things would apply to him any longer. It's been years since he considered himself a member of society which, he thought, therefore exempted him from all of the benefits of being part.

It's true that Bruce ended his self proclaimed exile, but it was only to do good, to use the mind that he was mercifully allowed to keep. A year at least since he tried to shoot his brains out, a year of learning to keep control, of helping humanity. But still without hope of canceling out the destruction _he_ , and therefore Bruce himself, has caused.

The Avengers Initiative.

Bruce is not so naive as to think that he would be a valuable member of any sort of league of heroes. They only want to control him. They only want to use him...but for what? They want to keep him locked up like before, submitting him to tests and calculations that he could do all on his own, that he had done. He could always have saved them the time and his own suffering by telling them it was no use, but they probably would not have listened, and part of him felt he deserved the subjectification.

And he trusted Agent Romanoff, whatever he may have said to her. She was telling the truth about not know about any ulterior motives insofar as he could tell. She feared him, that was plain enough, but she agreed to come to him on behalf of SHIELD because of a belief that he was needed, needed in this fight -- this fight against what? Nothing is clear. No use making theories without enough information, one would only come to false conclusions.

The only thing worth worrying about for the moment is whether one year is enough to be sure. Sure that he has control, short of perfect by far, but control enough to call it stable. Do I feel in control? Yes. It's been months since the other guy has had control of this body. Surely that's control enough? And like Agent Romanoff said, Bruce settled in a crowded, stressful city to test himself, and so far without incident. More than months, now that it's been pointed out, more than a year. How did they know that when Bruce had stopped keeping count himself? And what did they mean, other interested parties?

Back to a lack of information. Concentrate Banner, things are about to get stressful.

In order to feel more at ease in his own mind Bruce turns his attention back to the documents SHIELD had given him as background to the current assignment. It's clear to him that despite his suspicions that they want to control him, Dr. Banner can also be of use. This Tesseract, he can find a way to track it. He's already started the calculations, the list of materials required, the technology needed. It's an optimistic day if Bruce is finding ways to be useful. He may or may not be proving SHIELD wrong but if he can find a way to help he would at least be proving himself wrong.

Don't get your hopes up Banner, he told himself, next thing you know you'll be in your cage and any semblance of control will be long gone into green.


End file.
